Keynote address

Summary form only given.The Allen Institute for Brain Science has initiated a ten year project to study the principles by which information is encoded, transformed and represented in the mammalian cerebral cortex and related structures. The Institute will build a series of brain observatories to identify, record and intervene in the neuronal networks underlying visually guided behaviors in the mouse, including visual perception, decision making and consciousness. This is a large-scale, inhouse team effort to synthesize genomic, anatomical, physiological and theoretical knowledge into a description of the wiring scheme of the cortex, at both the structural and the functional levels. I will describe the associated computational and informatics challenges. The fruits of this cerebroscope will be freely available to the public.